


Near Miss

by Persiflager



Category: Cabin Pressure, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24719257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflager/pseuds/Persiflager
Summary: Statement of Martin Crieff regarding his time spent living in a shared house near Farnborough. Statement given 30 September 2010 and recorded by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 37





	Near Miss

My name is Martin Crieff and I’m the captain of MJN Air, a small charter airline based out of Fitton. The airline is owned and managed by Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, the co-pilot and first officer is Douglas Richardson, and Arthur Shappey is the cabin crew. Well, sort of - he’s officially listed as a passenger on the manifest now, but he makes the tea and does the hoovering.

I’ve never told anyone about this. I didn’t have anyone to tell at the time and now - well, Arthur probably would believe me, actually, but he believes in everything, and it’s not like he’d be able to do anything about it. I assumed at first Douglas was winding me up when he talked about the Magnus Institute but I looked you up and you seem to be the closest to a relevant authority there is for this sort of thing, so I thought I should make a report. I mean, this could all be one of Douglas’s jokes but it seems a lot of effort to go to, even for him. If this is you, Douglas, I hope you get a good laugh out of it. Silly Martin thinks he shared a house with a ghost, ha ha ha.

This happened shortly before I started working at MJN, in late 2007. I’d just gotten my first job as a pilot, working for a charter airline based out of Farnborough. I was living at home in Wokingham at the time, which is about half an hour’s drive away from Farnborough airport, but obviously that’s not ideal if you have to take a flight at short notice. That’s when I saw the advert on a board in the library for rooms available in a quiet house-share on the edge of town. The rent was really cheap, cheap enough that I thought there might be something dodgy about it - I’m not an idiot. But I thought, well, might as well check it out. 

The guy - Peter Lukas, his name was - sounded pretty friendly on the phone. He said that he was the landlord but he wasn’t around much because of work, and he was happy to offer cheap rent in return for making sure he got the right tenants. He said it was a big house but people generally kept themselves to themselves, and that it was really important to him to get someone who fitted in. I explained that I was a pilot and he seemed impressed, said that that was a very high-pressure job. Which it is, although someone people don’t seem to appreciate that.

We met at the house the next morning. I remember that he noticed my van and made some comment about Greek myths and coincidence and looked like he found it funny, but I didn’t get the joke.

It was a massive Victorian house, grey and a bit spooky-looking. There were ten bedrooms in total, I think. All of the reception rooms had been converted into bedrooms, I know that. The kitchen was small but I’m not much of a cook so that wasn’t a problem. I remember that Mr Lukas apologised, saying they kept having problems with the gas and a lot of the residents found it easier to just have a microwave in their rooms. The room he showed me was at the back of the house and looked over empty fields. It had a single bed, a desk, a wardrobe - everything you’d expect. It also had an ensuite bathroom, which I was impressed by, and it was really quiet. If Peter hadn’t mentioned the other tenants I’d have assumed the house was empty.

I signed the contract then and there, paid him a deposit by cheque, took the keys, and moved in at the weekend. I felt bad about moving out - my dad had passed away a few months before, and me leaving meant that my mum would be left on her own. But I couldn’t stay living at home forever, not now I finally had a proper job. I promised to call mum every week and was unpacked and settled into my new room by lunchtime. 

It was nearly a month before I met any of my housemates. I heard occasional noises of them talking or moving about or watching TV but I didn’t run into them in the hall or the kitchen (not that I spent much time there myself - flying planes isn’t exactly a nine to five job, and when I got in I generally just wanted to do my log book and go to sleep). That suited me fine. Everything about the house suited me, actually, although the dodgy phone signal was annoying. Whenever I tried to call home the signal disappeared completely, which was weird because it worked fine when anyone from the airline called me. I sent mum a couple of letters instead, and one day she texted asking if I’d got the new home card that she’d sent.

I hadn’t been keeping an eye on the post because I hadn’t expected to get any, so I went to the hall to see if someone had picked it up and put it on the chest of drawers that was there. They hadn’t, but when I looked in the drawers I found that they were filled almost to bursting with envelopes. Some of it dated back years, going by the postmarks, with nearly a hundred different names. I was sitting on the floor sorting it all into piles when the front door opened and a woman came in. She was tall with short dark hair and she looked shocked to see me, as if she thought I was a burglar (though I’d have to be a pretty rubbish burglar if all I was after was a load of old post).

After introducing myself I explained that I’d recently moved in, and asked if any of the previous residents had left forwarding addresses. She said that her name was Jessica and that I should speak to the landlord, and then she pretty much ran upstairs. My calls to Mr Lukas just kept going to voicemail. It seemed wrong to leave all that post sitting there - what if there were important bills? So I took all the envelopes with a return address, marked them ‘return to sender’, and put them in the postbox at the end of the road. I then made a list of all the names that still had post left and put a note in the kitchen asking if anyone had any details for them. I didn’t get a response.

I saw Jessica a few times after that. She was the only one of my housemates I ever saw, actually. I saw her disappearing into her room one day as I was coming up the stairs so I knew she had the room next to mine. We never talked though - she seemed to be avoiding me, and I didn’t want to be weird so I left her alone. That was around the time they brought out a new flight manual for the Dornier 328 so I was too busy learning the updated specs to worry about making friends. 

The last time I saw her was on 14 February 2008. I didn’t have a flight booked that day but didn’t fancy going out because I knew everywhere would be full of couples celebrating Valentine’s Day, so instead I decided to stay in and play some Flight Simulator II on my old Commodore 64. I’d just got past level 12, which was normally when I started getting into trouble, when I heard a strange sound coming from the next room. It was a swooshing, staticky sort of noise, and normally I’d mind my own business but this felt - wrong. Like when an engine starts vibrating at 14 thousand feet. Bad.

I paused the game, went out into the corridor and tried the handle of Jessica’s door. It opened, and this is the part where you’ll think I’ve gone mad, because I saw her disappear. She looked in my direction but she didn’t seem to see me, and then she just vanished. She looked terrified. She had her mouth open as if she was about to scream, and then she was gone.

What do you do when you watch someone disappear into thin air? There isn’t an emergency service for this sort of thing. I’d had an eye test the month before so I knew there weren’t any problems with my eyesight, and I’d never experienced hallucinations. If I’d gone crazy, would I have to give up flying? I know that sounds awful but you have to understand, flying is my life. 

I took a couple of steps into Jessica’s room and looked round, hoping that maybe she’d just fallen behind the wardrobe or something and a trick of the light had made it look weird. It was stupid. It wasn’t a big enough room for anyone to hide in, and I felt like I was trespassing. I did open the wardrobe door though, just to check, and that’s when I heard the whooshing noise again. It was louder this time, and when I turned around the door had gone. I was alone, trapped in a room with no door, and the static was getting louder and louder until my ears hurt with the pressure of it. In a panic I ran to the window, yanked uselessly at the locked handle, and then I noticed a plane flying overhead. I thought at first it was a Cirrus SF-50, but then it turned and I realised it must be a Lockheed McDonnell 3-12. Whoever was flying it was good - she flew smoothly despite the wind, and I watched until she was out of view.

When I turned back round the door was there, and I left. I made a statement to the police but I left out the bit about Jessica vanishing - I just said she seemed to have gone missing and that all of her stuff had been left behind. And I left a message for Mr Lukas but he didn’t call me back. The next week I got the job at MJN and moved to Fitton, where I share a house with a bunch of students from the agricultural college. They’re noisy and they leave the kitchen in a mess, but I find I quite like the company.

…

A lucky, if temporary, escape for Mr Crieff. I’m starting to wonder if every escape from these dread powers is only temporary. 

Martin looked up the address in Farnborough online. There’s still a house-share there, with a cheap room available to rent. He says it looks nice, from the pictures. Three former tenants in the past ten years have officially been reported missing by their families but the police investigations went nowhere. According to Rosie’s note in the visitor’s book Mr Crieff parked a van labelled ‘Icarus Removals’ in the Institute car park on the day he gave this statement; given that this incident would have taken place shortly after the launch of the Daedalus satellite, I think I can guess what tickled Peter Lukas. 

Mr Crieff served as captain at MJN Air for six years before leaving to take up a post with Swiss Air, based out of Geneva. He apparently had no further contact with the Lukas family until November 2017, when the single airplane owned by MJN Air went missing somewhere between over the North Sea. The crew complement was Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, Arthur Knapp-Shappey, Douglas Richardson and Hercules Shipwright, and the only passenger was Simon Fairchild. The black box was not recovered.

According to the missing person report filed by - the Crown Princess of Lichtenstein, really? - Mr Crieff refused to accept the official verdict of pilot error, due to the experience of the pilots and the good weather prevailing at the time of the flight. I don’t know what made him connect this incident to Peter Lukas, but he did inherit what remained of the business and would have had access to all their records. Perhaps there was no connection - only a desperate, grieving man trying to make sense of a tragedy. Mr Crieff was last seen on 23 February 2018, when he caught a train from Waterloo to Farnborough station. Nobody has heard from him since, although I believe the official investigation is still ongoing. A Mr Birling has offered a reward of £100,000 to anyone with relevant information regarding either the crash or Mr Crieff’s disappearance. This remains unclaimed.

I’ve always dreaded an encounter with Simon Fairchild. More than anyone else I’ve read about in these statements, he seems to take a sadistic glee in the horror he inflicts upon his victims. But I find myself hoping that Mr Crieff found him after all, and that he managed to find his former colleagues. For a pilot, being trapped in the eternal sky might not be as bad as being alone forever. I wonder if he was given the choice?


End file.
